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Lost species : Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museum...

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Item specifics

Condition
New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. See the ...
ISBN
9780226386218

About this product

Product Identifiers

Publisher
University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10
022638621X
ISBN-13
9780226386218
eBay Product ID (ePID)
22038281378

Product Key Features

Book Title
Lost Species : Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museums
Number of Pages
256 Pages
Language
English
Topic
Natural History, Life Sciences / General, Museums, Tours, Points of Interest, General, History
Publication Year
2017
Illustrator
Yes
Genre
Nature, Travel, Science
Author
Christopher Kemp
Format
Hardcover

Dimensions

Item Height
0.1 in
Item Weight
17.8 Oz
Item Length
0.9 in
Item Width
0.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended Audience
Trade
LCCN
2017-016333
TitleLeading
The
Reviews
Natural history museums and their collections come alive with Kemp's inside stories of new species formerly hidden away in museum drawers and jars. Anyone who appreciates discovery and has an interest in museums, history, and biodiversity will find plenty to enjoy in The Lost Species, an intriguing, engaging, and conversational read., Major natural history museums of the world today collectively hold an enormous, irreplaceable collection of scientific objects numbering in the billions. Among this library of life and culture that has been assembled over several centuries, each piece has its own tale to tell. Christopher Kemp vividly brings several of these stories to life in The Lost Species . He chooses pieces ranging from a lowly nematode worm to the mighty dinosaur Apatosaurus (formerly known as Brontosaurus ) to engage us. He presents these specimens to us not only as voucher specimens of Earth's biodiversity, but also as examples of human endeavor surrounding their discovery and eventual study. A great read for anyone interested in natural history museum collections, how they came to be, and what we can learn from them ., Essential for anyone with even a passing interest in biology (crypto- or otherwise). . . . The Lost Species is a compelling, fascinating, accessible, yet scientifically robust book that I can't recommend too highly., Natural history museums and their collections come alive with Kemp's inside stories of new species formerly hidden away in museum drawers and jars. Anyone who appreciates discovery and has an interest in museums, history, and biodiversity will find plenty to enjoy in The Lost Species , an intriguing, engaging, and conversational read., At a time when funding for natural history collections is under siege, Kemp's The Lost Species , which champions the irreplaceable value of these collections in the identification of new species, is a refreshing endorsement of both biodiversity and curatorial taxonomic expertise. . . . Kemp ably demonstrates the vital role that natural history collections and curators with taxonomic expertise play in the documentation of new species and ultimately in the preservation of biodiversity. These collections require maintenance to ensure the preservation of specimens and documentation for the next generation of taxonomists, who will discover more new species. It is my hope that The Lost Species will engender broader public interest and support for these efforts., "The natural history museums of the world are full of surprises--undescribed species, from flying foxes to king crabs--sitting on their shelves waiting for someone to notice. Kemp vividly brings to life the stories of these specimens, and the people who collect and describe them. The Lost Species will delight any reader who cares about discovery, adventure, and the little-known planet that sustains us."                                 , As part of the rising concern for global biodiversity, Christopher Kemp makes clear the value of preserved specimens in basic research. He successfully presents their study as part science, part history, and part adventure., The natural history museums of the world are full of surprises--undescribed species, from flying foxes to king crabs--sitting on their shelves waiting for someone to notice. Kemp vividly brings to life the stories of these specimens, and the people who collect and describe them. The Lost Species will delight any reader who cares about discovery, adventure, and the little-known planet that sustains us., Natural history museums and their collections come alive with Kemp's inside stories of new species formerly hidden away in museum drawers and jars.  Anyone who appreciates discovery and has an interest in museums, history, and biodiversity will find plenty to enjoy in  The Lost Species,  an intriguing, engaging, and conversational read., Natural history collections are vast, backlogged, error-riddled, or incompletely described. Think of all those expeditions in the 1800s and 1900s. Imagine drawers with thousands of beetles and flies, countless jars of marine invertebrates. What other treasures could those collections still be holding? Well, biologist Kemp wondered about that, too. And he went on a quest to uncover the forgotten collections and chronicled his findings in a book, The Last Species --new species that were only found with the help of natural history museums. . . . Amazing story., As Kemp showcases these inspiring discoveries, you'll find yourself wondering what undiscovered treasures can be found in your local natural history museum. Clearly there is plenty of unknown biodiversity: currently, only 2 million species have been named out of the estimated 10 million that are thought to be out there (some credible estimates go as high as 30 million unnamed species), but I was amazed to learn that as many as half of all museum specimens are misidentified. Yeow! Clearly, there's a lot of taxonomic and systematic work to be done. This engaging book is a compelling argument for the overall value of natural history museums, and for the importance of studying these collections., "As part of the rising concern for global biodiversity, Christopher Kemp makes clear the value of preserved specimens in basic research. He successfully presents their study as part science, part history, and part adventure."    , "An unexpectedly delightful and rewarding jaunt into once-cherished, now-decaying living history. Each chapter gives a quick sketch of a species or genus that was formally described from a museum specimen, often decades after it was collected. Most of the creatures--which include lightning cockroaches, squeaker frogs, pygmy bandicoots from New Guinea, ruby seadragons and "atomic" tarantulas caught at a nuclear test site in Nevada--have been identified in the past 15 years or so.", The Lost Species is a compelling, fascinating, accessible yet scientifically robust book that I can't recommend too highly., An unexpectedly delightful and rewarding jaunt into once-cherished, now-decaying living history. Each chapter gives a quick sketch of a species or genus that was formally described from a museum specimen, often decades after it was collected. Most of the creatures--which include lightning cockroaches, squeaker frogs, pygmy bandicoots from New Guinea, ruby seadragons, and 'atomic' tarantulas caught at a nuclear test site in Nevada--have been identified in the past fifteen years or so.
Table Of Content
Introduction The Vertebrates 1. Pushed up a Mountain and into the Clouds: The Olinguito ( Bassaricyon neblina ) 2. Beneath a Color 83 Sky: The Ucucha Mouse ( Thomasomys ucucha ) 3. Going on a Tapir Hunt: The Little Black Tapir ( Tapirus kabomani ) 4. A Taxonomic Confusion: The Saki Monkeys ( Pithecia genus ) 5. Scattered to the Corners of the World: The Arfak Pygmy Bandicoot ( Microperoryctes aplini ) 6. The One That Got Away for 160 Years: Wallace's Pike Cichlid ( Crenicichla monicae ) 7. Here Be Dragons: The Ruby Seadragon ( Phyllopteryx dewysea ) 8. A Century in a Jar: The Thorius Salamanders 9. From a Green Bowl: The Overlooked Squeaker Frog ( Arthroleptis kutogundua ) 10. A Body and a Disembodied Tail: Smith's Hidden Gecko ( Cyrtodactylus celatus ) The Invertebrates 11. Treasure in the By-Catch: The Gall Wasps ( Cynipoidea species ) 12. The Biomimic: The Lightning Cockroach ( Lucihormetica luckae ) 13. Sunk beneath the Surface in a Sea of Beetles: Darwin's Rove Beetle ( Darwinilus sedarisi ) 14. The Spoils of a Distant War: The Congo Duskhawker Dragonfly ( Gynacantha congolica ) 15. A Specimen in Two Halves: Muir's Wedge-Shaped Beetle ( Rhipidocyrtus muiri ) 16. Mary Kingsley's Longhorn Beetle ( Pseudictator kingsleyae ) 17. The Giant Flies ( Gauromydas papavero and Gauromydas mateus ) 18. It Came from Area 51: The Atomic Tarantula Spider ( Aphonopelma atomicum ) 19. The Host with the Most: The Nematode Worm ( Ohbayashinema aspeira ) 20. From a Time Machine on Cromwell Road: Ablett's Land Snail ( Pseudopomatias abletti ) 21. In Sight of Land: Payden's Isopod ( Exosphaeroma paydenae ) 22. A Ball of Spines: Makarov's King Crab ( Paralomis makarovi ) Botanical 23. In an Ikea Bag: The Custard Apple Family ( Monanthotaxis Genus) The Others 24. Waiting with Their Jackets On: The Fossils (Paleontology Specimens Collected by Elmer Riggs) 25. The First Art: The Earliest Hominin Engraving (a 500,000-Year-Old Shell) Epilogue Illustration Captions and Credits Notes Index
Synopsis
We hear routinely about dinosaurs unearthed in the Gobi Desert, about new marsupials found in the forests of Madagascar, about darling deep sea squid in the polar regions. These discoveries tend to be accompanied by wondrous feats of adventuring scientists. But just as one can experience the world in a backyard, or farther reaches of the world with a good book and a comfy armchair, scientists themselves know that the natural history museums of the world contain some of the best terrain for discovering new species. In recent years scientists have found in museum drawers and cabinets a new rove beetle collected by Darwin, a tiny lungless salamander thinner than a matchstick, a monkey from the Brazilian rainforest, and a 40 million year old beardog. The Lost Species shares the thrill of spelunking in museum basements, digging in museum trays, and breathing new life in taxidermied beings--a in a days' adventure for the scientists in this book. These discoveries help tell the story of life, and the priceless collections of natural history museums., The tiny, lungless Thorius salamander from southern Mexico, thinner than a match and smaller than a quarter. The lushly white-coated Saki, an arboreal monkey from the Brazilian rainforests. The olinguito, a native of the Andes, which looks part mongoose, part teddy bear. These fantastic species are all new to science--at least newly named and identified; but they weren't discovered in the wild, instead, they were unearthed in the drawers and cavernous basements of natural history museums. As Christopher Kemp reveals in The Lost Species , hiding in the cabinets and storage units of natural history museums is a treasure trove of discovery waiting to happen. With Kemp as our guide, we go spelunking into museum basements, dig through specimen trays, and inspect the drawers and jars of collections, scientific detectives on the hunt for new species. We discover king crabs from 1906, unidentified tarantulas, mislabeled Himalayan landsnails, an unknown rove beetle originally collected by Darwin, and an overlooked squeaker frog, among other curiosities. In each case, these specimens sat quietly for decades--sometimes longer than a century--within the collections of museums, before sharp-eyed scientists understood they were new. Each year, scientists continue to encounter new species in museum collections--a stark reminder that we have named only a fraction of the world's biodiversity. Sadly, some specimens have waited so long to be named that they are gone from the wild before they were identified, victims of climate change and habitat loss. As Kemp shows, these stories showcase the enduring importance of these very collections. The Lost Species vividly tells these stories of discovery--from the latest information on each creature to the people who collected them and the scientists who finally realized what they had unearthed--and will inspire many a museumgoer to want to peek behind the closed doors and rummage through the archives.
LC Classification Number
QH45.5.K46 2018

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